


One Month

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fake AH Crew, Immortal Fake AH Crew, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There was something beautiful about how time fell away from you, when seconds blurred to minutes and suddenly whole lifetimes have passed you by. How you can exist in one moment and be drawn to the next like nothing ever happened between them. Time had fallen away from Ryan and Gavin fast, the memory of their first meeting fell into the background while all their current life seemed to never end.orTime could never leave Gavin alone
Relationships: Gavin Free/Ryan Haywood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	One Month

There was something peaceful about the night sky resting over the city. The lights of downtown still felt blinding no matter how far from them you seemed, the stars would peak through soon. When the lights turned off Gavin felt like he could see a faint glimmer in the sky - an intimate moment between him and the void. 

Gavin could see the mark in his peripheral, the one thing his life had been building up to. The last 30 minutes until a pivotal moment of his life, his soulmate. People spoke about their counters so fondly, they did not see it as numbers but as a symbol of what was to come. Gavin knew he wouldn’t be bothered if they weren’t what he expected, he wasn’t one for love or the fanciful things that came with it. It’s why he was in his happy place, starfished at the one place that made him feel true solitude - the loneliness that he felt in the darkness was the sort of pleasure he had been chasing all his life. 

\-- -- -- 

Ryan stared up at mount chiliad, he had a job to do no matter what his counter said. He had taken the extra precaution to cover up every one of his identifying features for this job knowing his soulmate was going to walk up that hill the second the job was done - romance was not worth the risk of prison. 

He knew setting up his gun and getting up the hill would take him a good 25 minutes, he just hoped that the half an hour on his wrist gave him enough time to meet his soulmate somewhere else. He had to do this, he needed the money for this hit. 

His feet were planted on the ground, the case that held his sniper was a familiar weight under his arm. He knew he had to push forward no matter what met him at the top - no matter who met him at the top. 

\-- -- -- 

Gavin waited patiently, he saw one of the aeroplanes pass over the sky and felt the envy to be in another place. He knew he couldn’t though, he was sat on a mountain letting time pass by him. 691 years had led up to this moment, since his 16th birthday and he knew that something was about to happen. When his clock had started counting he felt something strange - a sense of purpose that he had always lacked.    


It had been weird at first, the large number. No one knew what these clocks meant, there were whispers of God or Satan that passed through the wind. A prize from God for a fulfilling life, a gift from Satan to tempt you. All sides had their arguments, all sides didn’t know what they were arguing for. Gavin had thought his clock was wrong, as he counted each second pass by he didn’t think he would be alive for 691 years - the idea of living for nearly another 7 centuries was an absurdity to him back then. 

The further back in his memory he went, the more he realised how awful his beginning had been. He remembered standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing his family would be shunned for his death. His suicide. He let his bare toes plant themselves on the edge, where the mulch crumbled and the Earth below him seemed low enough. He was putting himself before an almighty deity, he was putting himself before the man he had been taught to worship. He always remembered before the fall when he was about to scream, how bitter his mouth felt, how he felt like he was drowning before he could even jump. He had wanted to scream then, scream at the unfairness that he couldn’t end his misery because of the man who had put it there. 

He realised after, when he had awoken in his own bed with no bruises or broken bones, that he couldn’t end his misery at all. At first, it had been amazing, he let himself go hungry for his brothers to feed themselves, he took less and less from his family as he didn’t need to survive like they did. The good he could do for others kept him going until the others noticed, until he had been 50 years of age with no sign of wear on his face, until they saw his body as pristine as when he was younger. 

Then he had been called Satan, he had been called a witch, he had been called so many things - the names that then had meant something to him. In his first life, he had been chased out of his village, it blazed behind him in an orange glow while people ran after him with pitchforks and blades. 

He had fled in his first life, fled in fear of what he was. His beginning was one of the worst periods of his life, he had been brought into this world and branded a demon. He was happy when his village died, when the plague ravaged them and ruined them all. Gavin had never thought he was an evil person then - until his wish for harm upon others had come true. 

\-- -- -- 

Ryan trudged his way along the Los Santos roads, there was a body on top of the mountain. They didn’t appear to be moving that much, they stared at the stars. Ryan nearly feared he was already dead. 

He knew he wasn’t going to turn around until he knew for certain. This man was wanted dead, Ryan was one of the only people left willing to kill for money. He needed to pay his rent no matter who his target was. 

He didn’t want to keep thinking about his situation, he just needed to keep walking. He’d be up there soon enough. 

\-- -- --

Gavin missed his later life a lot. He missed meeting up with wealthy men on street corners for money, how they would lay their hands on something they despised and craved so simultaneously. He missed them falling in love with him, how they would become so much more compliant to his words - back then there was no worry about what would happen over 400 years from that moment. He was free to love as he wished and free to do as he pleased with no worry about the repercussions. 

There had been a Duke in that life, who would kiss the marks on his skin and breathe pretty promises down his ear. He was handsome by the standards back then, the sort of rugged and round that had made Gavin bat his eyelashes and bite his lip. There had been a Duke who would never be described as ill-hearted, who valued the people who had worked below him for a time - he had been kind to people who he had never known. The Duke had been the man to give him everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever hungered for. 

It had been the Duke’s daughter who had started his life off how he had wanted it. A marriage that had spread to the neighbouring cities, a wedding filled with the noblemen that would have turned their nose up at Gavin at some point. A ceremony filled with the envious eyes of people who were once superior to him, who had outranked Gavin mere months before. It had been fun to get away from there, whatever there had been called at that time. It had been fun to laugh with his new wife at the people who had stared and talked and didn’t understand. 

He had moved with her everywhere, different cities called their names and got them into more circles. Back then Gavin was just part of the hierarchy, playing the role that society had given him and interacting with whoever gave him the time of day. She had been his everything then, a companion who walked him through a lifestyle he wasn’t used to, who taught him how to talk and to listen, what they liked to hear and how to get their attention. It was terrifying when she was gone, not blessed like him with the chance to live forever, but gone with the wind and away from him. He remembered having to fake his death again after, removing himself from the spotlight after his wife died to make sure people don’t ask questions. 

Questions were bad back then, questions led to riots and outrage. He didn’t want to be revealed to the church, not at that time. He still had so much more to explore and do with himself. 

\-- -- -- 

It was hard to notice other things when you were drowning in your mind, when the worlds blurred together and the lights seemed to follow it. It continued to tick, 2 minutes, not that either of them were looking. 

\-- -- -- 

Gavin couldn’t stop jumping through time in his brain, fast-forwarding through the centuries he had left behind. The incidents where he forgot his own name after changing it so much, where the names he had slipped between seemed to slur in his mind into an unintelligible mess. 

He remembers the issues with his name more than anything, in an audience with King James VI where he was unsure if he was responding to Henry or Richard. Where all the members of the party looked the same, where all of them commented on his exotic appearance and asked where he came from which he had no viable story. It had been an embarrassment to him, not that James had managed to take much notice in him. The first royal he had ever met, the first royal invitation he had ever had. 

It seemed weird thinking now, he had been to so many extravagant royal affairs in his life, inserting himself into Charles II party culture, where the wine flowed plenty and every night seemed to end in gout. When he knew he had mingled with George I on occasion, and lingered in a portrait with Queen Victoria. All these people he had known under different names, different personalities. All with different stories and different lies to keep them appeased as to why he had been invited, he knew he couldn’t stay for much longer though. When Victoria recognised him years later, face unchanged and voice still as strong as the first time, he knew he couldn’t afford to be in England any longer. He feared his livelihood if he stayed, feared his house and everything he had ever built for himself. 

Gavin didn’t like to think much about how he ended up in Los Santos, how he had endured the Oregon Trail and the towns that sprung up around him. He only reminisced about how he had lived back then, lawless as he was still, enjoying all the things the gangs did, mingling with their bosses and working his way through their ranks. Until they were dead, then he left again. Rinse and repeat. Until he met his crew, the only people he had known so far that refused to. 

\-- -- -- 

The timer came to a halt, something in Gavin’s body burned when he noticed. 0s with no one to be found. All the time he had ever been alive, all those years he had waited and waited, every last second he had spent dreaming and he couldn’t see anyone nearby. 

Until he heard a sound, a person coughing behind him, sniper on show with a laser on his forehead. Just his luck that his first meeting would be someone wanting to make an attempt on his life. 

Gavin held his hands in the air and turned around, sick of the amount of times he’d been caught with a gun to his head. He wanted it to be over, for them to shoot and for him to disappear back into the Fake’s penthouse. The penthouse where he could surround himself with cushions and ignore the concept of someone being in love with him forever, where the Netflix was ever going and he always had someone there willing to dote on his emotions.

“Do it then, prick,” Gavin sighed into the open air. He refused to move until they shot, it wasn’t the worst thing that would happen to him. 

“No,” The man said. Gavin looked, to see a mask looking back at him, a black skull with red paint underneath. The symbol of the maddest man in Los Santos. “Understand that when I say I have waited over millennia for this moment, I do mean it quite literally. I’m not shooting.” 

“Just do it, for Christ sake,” Gavin demanded, “I can come back in 20.” 

“If someone told me all that time ago, I was fated to be with a stubborn dumbass I would never have counted on this.” 

\-- -- -- 

There was something weird about being soulmates with someone who was older than you, even when you have lived more life than most people you exist with. Watching them slip back into a tongue that had nearly died by the time you had heard of it in the first person when they would correct films and stories that had been passed down to them and they had experienced them first hand. 

Gavin remembered the first time he and Ryan had delved into their pasts together. The lifestyles they had led all the way back then. Ryan’s fall from a famous gladiator, to a famous wrestler to an infamous madman. The way that as time went on, all he was ever good for was fighting. He had done many things in between, signed up to the army, fought in crusades and killed people without mercy, moving to the underground back to the overground when wrestling started to move more and more towards the spotlight. Gavin hadn’t spoken when Ryan did, had only had the ability to gawk at stories of full arenas and tigers, his offerings to the gods before he left to fight. It was the refreshment of new stories, not from Geoff who had lived his life as a farmer, or Jack who had done all her own transitions until modern medicine allowed her to. There was a new excitement, a breath of fresh air in his lungs and a new kind of smile on his face. It had sounded like Ryan had been careful, like Ryan had made sure each new person was completely different from the last. He had been completely unrecognisable as a wrestler, again when Gavin saw some of his earlier photos that had been taken on the cameras that took so long to process. 

Ryan had been a lot more careful about the secret of his immortality, a lot more careful than Gavin. 

\-- -- -- 

The news had always annoyed Gavin to some extent, it was all the same boring thing of bank robberies and crimes in a city renowned for them. The activity here was plentiful yet all it ever did was drown the news cycle, make the 24/7 repeat until his eyes started to droop. 

It rarely interested him, rival gangs had shootouts all the time, bank robberies were always timed for the most money and of course, the casino owners were embezzling money when they’re all crime bosses anyway. Local news was a drab, and often too late to appease anyone anyway. 

Until at one point, he switched. He looked at more national news, tried to find BBC feeds and when he stumbled upon a British news channel, he knew he had to stay. An old portrait, from right before he left to escape to America, appeared on the screen. Gavin knew he was in the back, from the way the tan skin and larger nose stuck out from the mix of white faces and minorly creased faces enveloped him. It struck him, seeing him so small yet so evident that he felt the instinct to splutter in surprise. An almost choking that would be sure to wake up the whole penthouse if he couldn’t calm down. 

Little did Gavin know, this painting was only the beginning. 

\-- -- -- 

It had happened much later this time, almost a year from when Gavin had seen himself in the corner of Victoria’s many gatherings. More paintings from royalty, some he recognised, some he knew he was definitely in. They showed up quickly one after another, barely a few weeks in between some of them. The royals who had adored him, James, Charles, George all flashed on the screen with a crowd of people swarming their feet. 

When he saw, he wasn’t alone. He had been on the sofa with Ryan, absent-mindedly wondering what was going on in the world when they had been shown up. He knew he had tensed up especially when Charles’ party came up, where Gavin’s face clearly showed up in the corner wearing his old regal attire to try and fit in with the rest of the elites he had surrounded himself in. He wondered if someone would notice, see the same person floating through the important artworks that he had forgotten about. 

He knew he couldn’t get away with it, important art would be studied and displayed, people would look at all the details to identify the party’s guests. They’d see the nose, the bright blonde hair and out of place tan, he always seemed to develop no matter how absent the sun was. 

Ryan looked up when he felt Gavin tense, like an instinct he looked between the TV and Gavin and saw 4 boring looking paintings filling up the screen. He only needed to glance to see the puffed out collar and tan neck that would never have been seen on anyone in England back then. Where his nose seemed to pass through others' faces and his hair seemed to glint gold even though the old paint was flaking away. 

He knew he’d have to call Geoff. 

\-- -- -- 

Things always devolve faster than we think they do, where things that we believe should take much longer than they do seem to pass in a blink. They had found so many things, photos from bank heists, old portraits of him and his wife. Everything that detailed his existence flashed on the front page of news outlets. The man who death left behind. The immortal. All so definitive and outlandish. 

Ryan had stood by his side through all of it, poking fun at the ruffles he used to wear every day and the way he stood in portraits. How every picture he seemed to appear in always had him with some port or brandy, where the other people were being portrayed as slobs and yet Gavin was the only person in the room who was holding himself together. 

Gavin had never understood the thought of other people making things better, how their words can change the air and take the oxygen away from your lungs with humour. When their hands can grab yours when you’re scared and how they will let you rest your head on their shoulder when you need it. Gavin, while he had never been alone, had always been independent. He had hated this reliance on other people, the way their trust can disappear in a vacuum when their true loyalties break past their morals. He had never wanted someone to walk with him through a storm he had created - a storm he had created simply through existing. 

Ryan had tried to make it more entertaining for him to be in the public spotlight. They went out on dates frequently, ending up in places they would never dream of going out of fear of being too vulnerable. The beach, parks and best of all the museum. The museum where people would take a second glance and whisper, act like they’re not being hard while they murmur about how he’s “The Immortal.” The curators joined in sometimes, trying to get him to confess to being the Duke turned criminal, they want the exclusive that no journalist has been able to reach him to get. Not that they ever got the time of day, mind. All met with the same simple response, “I don’t see the resemblance.” 

It was this beautiful comedic mess to be trapped in, to be known for his age and not his career or for people to forget that he’s meant to be terrifying. It almost felt like the whole scenario had loosened his grip on who he was, his identity meant nothing anymore, his words didn’t matter when people seemed baffled by the concept of someone being alive for 7 centuries. 

He knew he was losing the thing he had built up over the years, his career was down the drain in minutes. The worst part was when it felt like it didn’t matter.

\-- -- -- 

There was something beautiful about how time fell away from you, when seconds blurred to minutes and suddenly whole lifetimes have passed you by. How you can exist in one moment and be drawn to the next like nothing ever happened between them. Time had fallen away from Ryan and Gavin fast, the memory of their first meeting fell into the background while all their current life seemed to never end. 

It was late when Ryan noticed the time, 3 am flashed on the clock next to him. The news was still going, ever-changing. There was still the usual, the gangs and the shootings and the robberies that had always been there. The names changed, but what good were they when they always seemed to end up overshadowed anyway. 

It was when Ryan noticed Gavin’s face on his TV, the photo of him smiling after another successful heist, 2 peace signs over his eyes as he saw the reporter making sure to get a photo of him. More evidence was mounting up to prove he was immortal, the paintings, the name changes, his wedding. The list seemed to never end with where they had gone searching into his past life, some things he may not even remember anymore. 

Ryan observed with faint interest, until he looked down and saw the smile that shadowed on his chest. He watched as Gavin twisted and reached for where Ryan’s hand normally was when he slept, making a small noise when it wasn’t there. 

Ryan took one more glance between the TV and Gavin and turned it off, moving more into bed so Gavin would calm down, placing his hand where Gavin could reach him. Letting the dark envelope both of them, in the only type of heaven they both would experience. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you have any soulmate aus you want me to write I'm accepting requests on my tumblr (goldenboy-gav) 
> 
> Thanks for reading and as always likes and kudos are appreciated :)


End file.
